Marathon training update: week 4, day 6

Today was the first long run that actually felt long: nine whole miles. Until this point, the "long runs" have not been too far removed from pretty standard distances I might cover in an ambitious weekend. But nine miles -- nobody runs nine miles for fun. It's just too darn long. At nine miles, you're either taking a subway or staying home.

I had a good plan for the run: one full loop around Central Park, as well as two laps around the Reservoir. I made a conscious effort to go slow ("slow and steady" was my mantra), as my training programs instructs. The first several miles felt great: legs felt warm, easy breathing, heart was under control. When I got to the Reservoir, though, my body kind of wigged out. I had a weird time on the unpaved path, there were too many other people around, and it was unforgivingly hot. There was no nice breeze rippling over the water and cooling me off: it was just hot like hell, with many other people hustling beside me and behind me and ahead of me.

The final couple of miles, back on the smooth newly-laid asphalt, felt great. I finished pretty strong and ended up at exactly 9 minutes per mile, which I was very pleased with, considering: (1) I was trying to go slow, shooting for between 8:30 and 9:00, and (2) I had a couple walking breaks in the middle, around that stupid Reservoir, when I just sort of lost interest in running.

I am pleased with how today went. The long runs will be morphing into unpleasant runs as the weeks progress, but I feel good having nine under my belt, since anything over 6-7 gets me a little anxious. Two more notes from today: I passed this little old black lady twice, as she was lumbering up and down the great hill (I guess she had turned around at some point), and the second time, she called out to me, "I saw you on the way down, too! Whew!" And we both cracked up mid-stride. And finally, on the train back home, I looked like a contestant in a wet t-shirt contest because of the voluminous amount of sweat I produced and the gossamer-like cotton shirt I was wearing. Very little was left to the imagination, but I held my head up high, dammit, because I jut ran nine miles.

In sum, training is going well. I have a few weird aches and pains, and I am constantly tired and hungry, but morale is high. Only about 13 weeks left until my mission is fulfilled!

Get tested

Last night we learned that L is not pregnant, and, equally important, neither am I. For surprisingly uninteresting reasons, we ended up with a couple of home pregnancy tests in the apartment last night. Obviously, we had to try them out. And I came to the conclusion that a home pregnancy test is like a gun in a couple of ways.

First, if you have one around, you're going to use it. After L told me we had an extra one, I obviously dropped whatever I was doing to try it out. I was impressed with its light weight and comfortable grip. I decided it would be easier to use if I sat down, but I quickly began to worry about how much time you had to spend peeing on the stick to get an accurate sample. As a result, when I was finished I held the test at an awkward angle, lest a flood of unnecessary urine rush past the sample area, window panels, and out onto my hand. Fortunately this didn't happen, but there was a tense moment where the liquid (which somehow turned blue) seemed to meander through the whole thing, revealing both a control stripe and the results panel, which indicated that I am ... not pregnant. Damn. Kind of bittersweet.

The second way a home pregnancy test is like a gun is that practice makes you more comfortable using it. What happened last night, with me liberally peeing on a stick while yelling through the door to my wife, is like a trip to the firing range. I got to know the home pregnancy test, to understand it, to feel comfortable with it. So that when the real moment arrives, if and when we ever have occasion to use one -- like (God forbid) the day I need to shoot an assailant or a wild boar to protect myself and my loved ones -- I will be ready to go (and not freeze up or get confused, ending up peeing on my assailant, or throwing a home pregnancy test at the boar).

Here's to a great, non-pregnant weekend -- sushi and beers for everybody.

Marathon training update: week 3, day 1

Today is a rest day, which means I don't have to exercise. I cling to these rest days like Leonardo DiCaprio, clutching that old piece of boat he held onto before he drowned in the water and old-lady Kate Winslet started throwing jewelry at him. You remember.

It's only been two solid weeks of my marathon training schedule (short runs Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday, long run on Saturday, cross-training Sunday, and resting Monday and Friday) but I feel like it's going well. I have violently upended my natural clock, getting up early in the mornings and exercising before work. One potential problem is that I have not cut back on my regular exercise routine; instead I'm just adding more stuff. I'm realizing that this is not a sustainable course of action, though. You should see me in strength training, trying to lift weights as my legs shake violently underneath me. There is some sort of diminishing return happening, I think. In the next couple weeks I want to focus on running more, running a lot, and cutting back on the cross-training and lifting.

I ran a solid 10K on Saturday, yet I was a little discouraged - my breathing seemed a little raggedy, I had that weird loping gait like a marionette for the first couple of miles, and I had to go to the bathroom the entire length of the run. It was not ideal. I'm trying to run slow, as I'm supposed to on these longer weekend runs, but it's hard for me to run slow. When I first began running (7 years ago!) I honestly didn't realize that "jogging" means "don't sprint." I would run as fast as I could for as long as I could, then marvel at all the other normal joggers passing me by as I clutched my side and minced back home. A similar learning process needs to occur here -- I need to get a better sense of my timing (I can't not a run mile between 7:20-7:40, it seems) and let it slide, just a bit.

Overall, it's an exciting couple of weeks. Two weeks down, sixteen to go. I want to use this space to keep a record of my training, both to mark my progress and any obstacles that arise, and to keep myself accountable to this process by posting a public record. This is exciting! Hit the streets!

Abraham Lincoln: Believe the hype

A few days ago I finished Doris Kearns Goodwin's massive cinderblock of a book, "Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln." A biography of Lincoln, it also explores the lives of his main rivals for the 1860 Republican presidential nomination, and then moves into a study of how Lincoln included these intelligent, ambitious men in his Cabinet, shrewdly managing their skills and egos to create a strong presidency fueled by intelligence, compassion, rivalry, and, ultimately, loyalty. I don't know if I've ever written a sentence with nine commas before, but Lincoln is worth it.


One of the remarkable things about this book for me was that it truly humanized Lincoln. He was no longer the marble deity in Washington, or the severe portrait on our currency; Goodwin portrayed him as a real man, who suffered loss in his life yet found strength through his own self-confidence and natural abilities. When he was young he would listen intently to his father telling stories to other adults, and then he would ponder these stories and figure out how to relay them to his young friends, and later enthrall them with his anecdotes and humor. This knack for language and narrative remained with him his entire life and prepared him to be an amazing orator, someone who would use analogies, simple language, and folksy humor to convey profound ideas about freedom, the Constitution, the importance of liberty.

He was truly a self-taught man, studying the Bible and learning Shakespeare to make up for the elite education he never received. He lost his mother, his sister, his first love. Yet from age 23 he knew he wanted to leave his mark on the world -- although he was ambitious, he was never corrupted by the lure of power. He spoke of his political enemies with respect, and was honored by his peers for his wisdom and patience. He did not act impulsively, or out of anger.

To me one of his most remarkable characteristics was his reliance on humor. The few bawdy jokes Goodwin reproduced in the book were slightly crass, slightly tasteless, and surprisingly funny. Even in the darkest days of the Civil War, he would begin meetings with jokes and funny stories. Although some of his colleagues frowned on this, he needed to laugh in order to face the seemingly impossible tasks ahead of him.

And here's the thing: even when he was president, Americans knew that they were in the presence of a truly great man. His reputation of honesty was well-forged by the time he entered the White House. His Cabinet members constantly remarked on his wisdom and gifts as a leader, and many writers pointed out that the nation was lucky to have him at the helm during those violent years.

Can you imagine a president renowned in his own time for his wisdom, patience, compassion, humor, and conciliatory nature? A self-taught man, a brilliant orator, a man who could rise to the nearly impossible challenges of his day. People used to say that someday Lincoln would join the pantheon of great American leaders, and that his reputation may someday surpass that of even Washington. In a very small way, despite the anger and lack of charity in our political culture today, I feel proud to live in an America that honors Lincoln as the leader and statesman he aspired to be. He would not bask in the praise and glory our country has draped around his name -- around the very idea of Abraham Lincoln -- but he certainly earned it.

Rite of summer

Yesterday L and I did one of my favorite New York activities of the whole year, an event that marks the brilliance of summer as much as the sunniest weekend or the coldest fountain Coke: we went to see Shakespeare in the Park. This year's first selection is Romeo and Juliet. We woke up at 5:30 am and dragged ourselves, armed with blankets, books, and an assortment of healthy snacks, up to the Delacorte Theater to try to get tickets. These tickets are free, and passed out at 1 pm each day, so the crowds form very early (the first people usually camp overnight, or get there around 4 am). Each year I feel a unique stress as we hustle out of the house, and then, in the most horrifying moments of all, try to run in flip-flops past the already-formed line with an increasing sense of dread, until you throw down your blanket and stake your claim in line.

We were there by 6 am, so we settled in for a solid seven hours of reading and napping. You always make friends with the people around you; the two girls behind us in line were friendly grad students who had interesting stories and good choices in reading material. People in this line approach the task with the intensity and organizational focus that is characteristic of this city. Everyone listens intently as the line monitors explain the process, and people are vigilant to kick out would-be line cutters. We did not wake up at 5:30 am, and we are not spending most of the day bumming around in the park, for nothing.

So the great news was that we did get tickets, after many snacks, several trips to the public bathrooms (which, given their location in a municipal park, could be a lot grosser), and 250 pages of my Lincoln biography. Of course, a couple hundred people behind us were turned away, many of whom were only a half hour or so behind us -- we were very fortunate to get tickets, so we spent some time high-fiving, which is somewhat rare in our marriage. Anyways, here's how I spent the rest of the day: I did my first long run of marathon training (6 miles), I got a haircut (including the mandatory moment of ghastliness when my hair is soaked and the guy does this thing with the comb that makes me look tragically bald, which may or may not be true), took a nap, when to Chipeezley, and then came home for dinner, then went back up to the Park for the play.

The play. Here's the thing. We've gone to Shakespeare in the Park for four years now, and every year I think it's the best one ever, and this time was no exception. But for all the familiarity of Romeo and Juliet, I was so surprised and enthralled by this production. Lauren Ambrose as Juliet was stunning. She brought a sense of youth, intensity, and passion to her role. This was the first time I ever considered how young Romeo and Juliet are, and Ambrose infused her role with the enthusiasm and slightly spastic quality of teenage love. During the balcony scene, when the two are furtively flirting and kissing and generally mooning over each other, I was reminded of those long ago nights in high school, when a football stadium or a parking lot or a school dance created all of the romance and privacy you could possibly fathom, and this was more than you could ever dream of while it also fell flaggingly short -- the play brought back all of those dizzying emotions.

I guess while the play is about romance and tragedy and thwarted love, it's also about the the impetuousness of youth, and the utter faith you have in your own choices and destiny and view of the world, a faith that may be battered as the years move along. This play was passionate, and sexy, and funny, and gripping.

The set itself was utterly beautiful -- there was a huge, round shallow pool in the center of the stage, with only an additional structure of scaffolding to create the public squares, balconies, ballrooms, and crypts of the setting. The characters would glide or wade or stomp or fight through the water, lights would reflect and characters would become their own doubles. It was almost magical, especially as the sun set and the birds flew above us and the few stars emerged into the sky.

Basically it was an amazing night, one that fully justified my excitement and fondness for Shakespeare in the Park. The second production this summer is "A Midsummer Night's Dream," and I'm already planning on another trip when my sis is in town. Another day in the Park, lazing the morning away beneath the canopy of trees and making unexpected friends, then returning at night to be moved and surprised and reminded of how lucky you are to be here -- what more could anyone ask of a summer day?

State update: California

Well, I'm back from two and a half weeks in California. Although I was very busy at work, which sufficiently filled my days and cumulated in a bizarre anti-climax (kind of like the "Sopranos" finale), I had enough time to experience Los Angeles and get to know my temporary host city.

And here's what I learned: L.A. is awful. We were staying at a particularly trendy hotel, swishy and swanky to a ridiculous degree, with a chic rooftop pool and hallways that smelled like pot. Pot was officially the aroma of the trip. At first, I thought maybe the hotel used a very particular kind of carpet cleaner or something, but no, it was pot. Everywhere in the hotel. Pot, and a too-cool pool, and me. Welcome to Los Angeles.

We did a lot of people-watching, seeing girls dressed like Paris Hilton with their fake boobs perky and perhaps slightly askew, accompanied by Jersey-like guys in their uniforms of untucked button-downs and carefully distressed jeans. I felt like an utter yokel in our hotel, especially the first night, as my New York friends and I swam in the pool as the socialite types glowered and strutted around us. (I think that in an urban environment, you can either project hipness by genuinely being hip, or being familiar enough with your environment to fake it. In New York, I can fake it. In LA, I was irredeemably uncool, like I was wearing the same pair of overalls the whole time.)

We stayed in the downtown area, a desolate district of high-rise office buildings and restaurants that close early and don't open on the weekends. It's a very commuter-centric area, where one can spend 40 minutes on a Sunday morning searching for a New York Times (the sign of a true Manhattanite, according to our friend at the bookstore) before one discovers the lone Starbucks that is open. Nobody walks in LA, and nobody reads.

Good things about LA: Dodger Stadium, which is small and disheveled like a beloved old person; hiking in the San Gabriel mountains, to be in an environment utterly unlike anything back east; seeing the Hollywood sign through the haze from our office window; the variety of R&B radio stations, which let me enjoy dance hour in the purest way, the way I did in high school; the ocean breeze you can feel from the PCH; karaoke in Koreatown.

It was an interesting trip. L came to see me for a weekend, which was exactly what I needed to pull through. Not only could she laugh at the ridiculousness of it all with me and charm the hell out of my colleagues, but she brought me the books and magazines and news of our culture that is completely ignored out there. In the midst of our trendy, spare hotel, with the ironic carpet and wall art and lack of comfortable seating, I missed our little apartment with the old furniture and the plants and the street noise.

And to arrive home -- I came home to find the city in the full explosion of summertime. The leaves on the trees were thick and mature, there was warm sun and a breeze, people eating on sidewalk tables and walking in pairs or with their kids. We wandered around to bookstores and movie theaters, through parks, enjoying the afternoon light that softened into night as the streetlights flicked on to signal a new phase in the urban day. Nothing was closing, nothing was ending. For a very brief moment, the night, like the summer, seemed endless.

Professional class

I have had a really busy few weeks, but I have been conspicuously quiet about everything, blog-wise. I started working at the big ol' law firm, and the corridors of the professional world are lined with too many pikes decorated with the heads of loose-lipped bloggers for me to even think about sharing my work escapades here. But it's hard to not say anything -- my life this summer is remarkably different than it has ever been, really. I've joined the mobs of sharply-dressed twenty-something guys. Waiting for the subway today I counted ten other young men, about my age, wearing similar khaki pants and the same business-casual shirts, sans ties. We all carried umbrellas, ipods. Some had bags, I had a book. It's strange to join this throng of commuters, and I wonder if it's an avoidable part of adulthood -- I think it is a part of New York adulthood, if you've been in school for many years and are aiming for the professional class, rather than a hipsterish plastic-black-frames lifestyle, which just looks silly as people get farther from thirty. I'm taking the professional route.

Anyways, all this to say that work is going well. I feel challenged, and I'm striving to be smart, and I'm also turning on the charm and professionalism and collegiality as much as I can. Every sentence is punctuated by numerous thank yous, even when the other person and I both know that I have nothing to thank them for -- it's just good business. It's worked for me so far, at least. I've even started going to the gym early, at 6:45 am, to make up for some of the classes I'm missing, now that my workdays bleed into the evening. But usually I have time to go for a run by the river as the sun sets, or at least have a nice meal or a stroll around the block with L. It's a very different summer than I'm used to, but it is undeniably summer.

On Thursday this law firm is sending me to Los Angeles, California for a couple weeks -- I'll be back June 23rd. Wish me luck.

On shampoo

Today I realized that I finally finished up the bottles of shampoo and conditioner that I purchased in Hawaii lo those many months ago. Back in late December, as the honeymoon began so promisingly, we bought standard-sized bottles of Suave shampoo and conditioner, and we carried them around with us from Oahu to Hawaii to Oahu again, and then back to New York. They were exotic; they were Hawaiian; they were souvenirs. And now, five months later, I finally finished them (L having her own well-established haircare regime which sadly does not involve Suave products, but somehow involves 14 other bottles in our shower).

Call me crazy, but I feel that five months is a really long time to nurse the same bottle of shampoo. Of course, maybe I'm doing some showering at the gym that would otherwise occur at home, but this is unlikely, since I shower at the gym at nine o'clock at night. Since my hair has been fairly short, maybe I'm applying smaller dollops than usual. But if this is actually the case, then over the course of my lifetime I've only used about 65 bottles of shampoo. As a pampered American who has been on this planet for 27 years, obviously I feel a bit shortchanged by my consumption here. Have I been underwashing? Is 65 bottles even a whole crate or pallet or shipment of shampoo? What the hell?

This is what I think about in the shower every day, mindful of the exotic curves of the Hawaii Suave bottles, and the remnants of the price stickers on the plastic. Years ago I heard that it takes six weeks for all of your skins cells to flake off and be replaced, to leave you with a completely new outer layer, so I would always think that for six weeks after I returned from anyplace, I still wore some of the same skin that had been far away and experienced different breezes or water or sand or light. I guess I can add the five-month shampoo yardstick as another measurement of time and distance. It will be mildly sad to toss out those two bottles -- not many of my toiletries are native Hawaiian.

State update: Montana

"Big Sky Country" is such a simple phrase that it can be hard to grasp the grand, literal truth of the statement. As soon as you arrive in Montana you are confronted with the vast dome of sky above you, clear, uninterrupted, blurry on the edges with rolling hills or snowy peaks or the lurching tips of pine trees. There are no tall buidings here; there are none of the smudgy east coast afternoons to which you are accustomed.

We spent most of our time in Missoula, a college town with a modest downtown area and the rebellious streak that comes from a constantly moving student population. The Clark Fork river meanders through town; once we took a break from a bike ride to watch a beaver work on his dam and meander through the snowmelt river. Cycling is the preferred mode of transportation here; we would ride our bikes along the dirt path alongside the river, park our bikes next to the college bookstore or the brewery or the pizza place, and eventually coast back home. Once we hit the paved streets of the neighborhood we would ride bikes with the freedom of kids on a summer evening, loping along in wide turns punctuated by the occasional sprinted race. Missoula was an oasis, an extremely peaceable valley.

In Glacier National Park we ogled at the remarkably clear reflections of the mountains in McDonald Lake. Since we arrived before the beginning of the season, the park was ours: empty roads, quiet trails. The mountains seemed almost protective of their tranquil lakes, each one ice-cold and fed by countless tributaries tumbling down the slopes. We could follow the progression of each waterfall with our eyes, watching the streams gain power as pale mountain goats hobbled along the rocky cliffs above.

On our last day in Glacier we went on a ten-mile hike, aiming to get up to a glacier. We didn't make it, though; we passed the snow line, and were tromping along the banks in shorts and t-shirts and sneakers, but the sun had already peaked and we had a long way to go. We made it back to McDonald with wet feet and sunburnt faces, with a distinct sense of satisfaction and acute exhaustion. On the drive back to Missoula we honored our accomplishments with sandwiches and tall glasses of Pepsi, and another feast awaited us in town.

Montana was a dream, an alternative to the life we've chosen in New York. The whole trip was such a ridiculously clear Country Mouse/City Mouse comparison; we replaced our city walks and media consumption and cosmopolitan poses with early evenings and bike rides and an utter lack of awareness of the world beyond the mountain range on any side of us. It was a great sojourn, but I was happy to come home. One more photo: the latest in my genre of awesome, one-handed self-portraiture.

Charlottesville is my home planet

I had a startling realization today, as L and I made a mad dash to Charlottesville and back for a baptism and lunch at Take It Away: my home planet is this town. I look at myself, and I look at everyone else around here, and I realize that they are me.

The proof came when L and I got dressed to head down for the baptism, a pleasant, classy affair with some easygoing parents and their occasionally cranky baby. I was rocking a bright polo and some cargo shorts, and L was wearing a really pretty sun dress. She was like the hottest chick at the Kentucky Derby. Anyways, when we made it into town and went in to get our sandwiches, we looked around and quickly noticed that everyone looked exactly like us. All of the young men wore their polo shirts (what a spectrum of pastel bright colors, my own cerulean shirt effortlessly joining the parade!) untucked over khaki shorts or pants, ratty old flip flops beating the brick sidewalk; all of the women and coeds wore pretty sundresses or skirts with the same flips as L. Everyone was more tan than us, but their hair was the same length and color as ours. All of us were scrubbed, earnest, open-faced, and well-dressed, carrying ourselves with a certain confidence and easy happiness that comes from an elite education and a distinct familiarity with affluence. What a day to be young and alive! Khakis for everyone!

I have to admit, it felt good in a way. These were the good, decent, Polo-wearing white folk of Charlottesville! We saw nary a poor person. Nary a person of color. It was nothing like New York, nothing like real life. But to some degree it explained a lot about me and how I present myself and how I think things should be, for whatever that's worth.

Charlottesville is my home planet; Charlottesville is my Krypton. But New York is my home. A marriage between those two worlds may be impossible, but it's nice to visit your past in order to better appreciate your present. It will be good to return home in a little while.

Tomorrow we're flying out to Montana. More to come in a week.

Look the part

Today L and I went on a shopping extravaganza to buy me work clothes for my new job, which starts in a couple weeks. We walked into Macy's this morning armed with nothing more than a set of extremely specific guidelines to help define "business casual," as well as moxie in abundance, and we left the store two hours later carrying two bags apiece and beaming with a glow of triumph. Here is what I purchased, starting at the top and working down:

3 dress shirts, two white and one blue (and slim fit, no less) (hubba hubba) (thanks James)

4 extremely cool neckties, none of them paisley and none of them from the Donald J. Trump collection

4 pairs of premium Dockers (khaki, olive, navy, black), all with a special sheen of quality

12 new pairs of socks, with extra-stay protection, to make sure they cling to my calves in a most flattering way

2 pairs of shoes, kind of dressy, kind of orthopedic, in black and brown.

This amount of clothes, which could dress an entire Somalian village for a summer internship at a law firm, cost me about $575. But I saved a total of about $197 on all of my purchases, thanks to the one-day sale we unknowingly stumbled into.

All in all, this was an extremely successful shopping adventure, and even L was impressed with our efficiency. Special thanks to Ashesh for his sartorial guidance, since no one rocks the young professional look quite like he does. Sweater vests for everyone!

Sweet surrender

So, I guess this is summer. Exams are over, feet are bare, shorts are worn on the street. It was such a relief yesterday to take my last exam and walk away from school, knowing I don't have to go back there for several months. Here's the final wrap-up:

Professional Responsibility: Harder than I thought it would be. Am I an unethical person, after all? The essay turned weirdly personal: "Well, if I was in that situation I guess I would just follow my heart, you know? Like Jiminy Cricket? Always let your conscience by your guide, unless prohibited by statute?"

Income Tax: An utter fiasco. Apparently some people were in tears as they left the exam; at least I kept it all in. I guessed on the multiple choice section. On the essay I tried to spit out whatever statements of fact I could cobble together, hoping something would be mildly relevant. Discouraging.

Entertainment Law: I actually felt all right during this one, although I basically finished the three-hour exam in an hour and a half. Everyone was clattering on the keyboards furiously as I squirmed in my seat and tried to wring some additional knowledge from my brain. I made myself sit for an additional hour, occasionally tinkering with a sentence or adding another clause here or there, but I knew I was finished. Moseyed to the bathroom, came back. Anything else to say? No? Ok, I guess we're done then.

And that's how the semester ended - prematurely. I went to the bookstore and got $40 back for two textbooks that cost about $100 apiece, then I used my hard-won earnings to buy a school t-shirt (my first one ever -- the school's weird purple-burgundy color, with "Fordham Law" in white -- I guess I'm ready to publicly acknowledge my attendance, now that I'm 2/3 finished) and lunch. I now have a few days of relaxation before a quick trip to Charlottesville, then Montana, then back here again for work, my first regular income source since 2005.

So this is summer. What a relief! I'm glad the school year is over. By the time I have to go back I'll be ready to return for another round, but for now I surrender myself to some days of indolence. "The life I Ieft behind me is a cold room."

Uncharitable thoughts

I think I have been stressed out lately, more agitated than I realized. My Barcelona eye twitch is still flaring, and I am quite aggravated over this round of final exams. I stumbled through one yesterday and have the most wretched exam ever tomorrow (Federal Income Tax) and I just want to wash my hands of the whole thing. I was looking forward to going to the gym tonight, but it was the kind of night where I just felt generally cranky throughout, and allowed myself to wallow in uncharitable thoughts about everything.

It started at home, when I went to try on a new shirt I got from my last race, a shirt that's good-looking and made of a special sweat-wicking material (not one of these tissue-paper-thin cotton shirts that dissolves after six washes and lets everyone check out your torso once you sweat through the fine layer of fabric). Since I realized a couple years ago that most men's large sizes are made for chunky people rather than tall people, I've been going medium. So I pull this shirt on, and it's incredibly tight in the upper chest area and arms, but then the neckhole is gaping wide, exposing my collar bones. L laughed at me and said "you look like a hot gay guy." I tried to see this as a compliment. Strike one.

Progress to the gym. In hip hop, this new, muscle-bound-to-a-silly-degree guy comes in and sets up shop in the front row [gritting teeth] and proceeds to verbally process the entire class: "One TWO three-and-four FIVE SIX seven-and-EIGHT! Ba ba BA BA BA ba BA BA ba bum bum!" He's grunting and doing all of this loudly, not like the occasional "uh" or "ooh" that I might expel under my breath. He's also meandering his way into the center of the room, into my zone. Please shut up. EMNY! I wondered if he was mildly retarded; I wanted to say something but didn't want to provoke an episode of roid rage. Strike two.

[It goes without saying, of course, that the standard bunch of arrhythmic morons are crowding me in class too: the little guy I call the Ninja, who is hyperkinetc and jumps all around but doesn't really get the smooth vibe of the music; the girl with about half the skill she thinks she has, despite her cool baggy pants; etc. I may not get all the moves precisely, and I may be like Old Man Suburbia in that room, and there may be occasions like this where I'm copping some serious attitude, but at least I feel the groove and don't move my body like it's marching band tryouts. Yet I know I'm being a jerk right now.]

I make my way through another nintey minutes of exercise and head on over to the burrito place to regain some calories and negate my previous activity. At the soda fountain, I was waiting to get my drink as three of the back-kitchen cooks filled their cups. Now tell me, is it wrong that when I saw these young men, identically-dressed, all pretty short, all hard-working immigrants who make an honest living and deserve all the protections and benefits our society can offer, is it wrong that I immediately thought of them as Oompa Loompas?

Strike three. I need to finish up exams and get the hell out of Dodge. I'm a nicer person than this.

Don't sweat the technique

The alarm went off this morning at 7:30 am, way too early for a Sunday. Once I registered the facts of the alarm and the radio and the morning itself, I was immediately aware of the insistent ringing in my ears and the dull hum in my brain, remnants of L's birthday festivities from last night. So, with about five hours of sleep under my belt, I lurched out of bed and got ready to run a 4-mile race in Central Park. I brushed my teeth, put my contacts in, and headed uptown on the train.

Last night we kicked things off with a tapas dinner, which sounded great in theory but in actuality may have left all of us slightly hungry. I know I was about ready to eat my napkin. Then we moved on to our latest nightspot of choice, conveniently located two blocks from the apartment. Knowing I had this race in the morning I kept my alcohol consumption to a minimal degree, for me, at a birthday party, with fun people. We were having a great time, the music was lively, except for a weird Bon Jovi interlude, but as the night progressed, Ashesh rightly pointed out that "the crowd was...changing." Changing into a more surly, outer-borough, inappropriately-dressed permutation of its previous self. (Ladies: keep your bras under your clothing. This applies to most of you.) So finally we left, got some pizza, and went home. Success.

On the train up to the park this morning I assembled these recollections in my brain as I thought about why I was running, and also tried to focus on not getting mugged by the other tired and untrustworthy people around me. My head felt a little inflated and my body was exhausted. L had just rolled over when I left the house.

So I finally started doing this run, then, and it seemed pretty standard: pick somebody up ahead of you and gradually overtake them; run on the periphery of the road so you don't waste too much time jostling past other people; take note of the dreadlock guy you see at every race, who runs at about your pace; don't stop for water, don't even think about it; focus on your breathing; note how pretty the park is in the springtime; let gravity speed you up on the downhills; consider the communal nature of these races, the fact that you can dissolve into a sea of 8,000 runners with 16,000 legs pumping on the asphalt just like yours, the way that the crowd becomes something almost organic; just listen to your music and keep moving.

I felt winded at points and felt like I dropped my speed down to a crawl. At other times I really pushed hard and basically stalked some hapless runner until I passed them. I was dying to come across mile marker 3, and when I finally passed it, I didn't feel like I had much left for the remaining mile, and I couldn't even muster up a decent sprint for the very last stretch, when the banner at the finish line is in sight, an actual crowd is present along the edges and the thumping dance music obliterates whatever club tune you've been listening to. But I crossed the finish line, gave myself a high-five over my head (which may look like an ordinary clap, but it's not), gathered my complimentary water and sportsdrink and tart macintosh apple, and headed home.

Later in the afternoon I checked my results out on the web, and it turns out that today I posted my fastest pace-per-mile time ever, in the two years I've been running these things. It was a solid twenty seconds quicker than my usual effort, and I beat last week's time, in the same distance, by a solid minute. Maybe I didn't waste as much time dodging other people today, or maybe I happened to just hit some nice new peak of fitness today, but whatever the case, I felt really proud of myself.

I'm already thinking about what my goal time is for the next four-miler I do, and the next threshold for my pace time. In hindsight (of course) it felt great to wake up early and get out of the house and do something, to wipe away the cobwebs left over from a night on the town and embrace the day. When I came home the ringing had subsided in my head. Today I felt a certain pride and contentment that I doubt I could feel from, say, Federal Income Tax, or Professional Responsibility, or Entertainment Law, which are the exams I'm facing in the next couple days.

I guess the moral of the story is, if you can't eat your Wheaties, try knocking back a few Heineckens and not sleeping for a night, and watch your athletic abilities soar! You'll see a real spike, I guarantee it.

Groove salad

The latest thing I have found to help me stagger through this round of final exams is a radio station on iTunes, filed under Electronic, called "Groove Salad on SomaFM." The Salad describes itself as "a nicely chilled plate of ambient beats and grooves." That well-turned phrase illustrates everything there is to know about it, and I have come to love this random little station.

I listen to this as I cobble together my outlines, and the mostly lyric-free, synthetic beats and whirrs are the perfect complement. Occasionally a vocal will waft along to ride the spare drumbeats and syncopated clicks and clacks. Sometimes I will be immersed in the sounds and suddenly I am no longer at my desk alone in the middle of the night: I am on the midnight flight from Reykjavik to the Northern Lights, the Japanese stewardess is strutting up the aisle carrying my vodka gimlet on a silver tray and the man across the aisle in sunglasses is raising his glass in a toast, and there's dry ice everywhere, and suddenly I am behind the eclipse or in the center of the moon in a room made of ice and light, like the Fortress of Solitude, but instead of Superman there are harajuku girls and aliens and a dolphin in a nightclub, tiny candles everywhere, floating upwards like bubbles in champagne, then the Northern Lights come on and the jet flying me from Reykjavik to infinity gently lifts up, up, up, and the stewardess and the sunglasses man and the dolphin are there, and we all raise our glasses in a toast to ... we raise our glasses in a toast to ... oh no ... that's it.

I lost it. Suddenly I am back to the books, realizing I read the same paragraph about federal income tax three times. The nouns are interchangeable at this point. Undaunted, I must press on and keep reading and typing, carefully, with reflection, until the next flight from Reykjavik leaves for a brief sojourn away from the desk and the books and law school. This is why I love Groove Salad.

Cormac McCarthy's The Road

A couple of days ago I finished reading The Road, by Cormac McCarthy. I was particularly excited to read it because it was at the cross-section of two of the most powerful forces in publishing: Oprah picked it for her book club, hence the gaping "O" sticker on the cover, and it won the Pulitzer Prize. I love the Pulitzer prize, but in recent years, I feel that it has gone to these small, modest character studies (see Gilead, March) where intense introspection occurs in front of a rainy window, yet nothing seems to transpire. I like a novel that is ambitious - some big, brawny book spanning decades, where the author tries to take the ideal of the Great American Novel and wrestle it in between two covers (see Middlesex, Kavalier and Clay). So I was excited when the Pulitzer chose this book, and I was excited that Oprah's blessing upon it moved the paperback publishing date up by about six months.

I read this novel over the course of three weeknights, from midnight to two in the morning. It was one of the most bleak books I've ever read: about the sojourn of an unnamed man and his son through a near-future, post-apocalyptic America. In the wake of some horrible undisclosed nightmare, when the planet and most of humanity have perished, this man is hoping to follow the road to the coast, where hopefully something better will await him and his son. As they encounter other stragglers and scavenge abandoned homes and towns, details emerge of the hellish world that has reconstituted itself in the face of utter disaster: roving gangs, slavery, cannibalism. Out of chaos, this order has formed.

The redemptive quality of the book comes from the bond between father and son, the father's selfless and ingenious devotion to the boy. The father can remember the world before this disastrous event occurred; he can remember the boy's mother and knows why she is not with them. But he protects his son from these facts, and tries to teach the child decency and compassion when these ideas are completely untethered from their reality. His love for the child is so bright that it carries the novel forward.

Now, several days after I reached the last page, I'm still thinking about the book and wondering what happened to its protagonists. It was the most harrowing book I've read. I read it as L slept beside me, and when I finally put it down, my eyes weary but my mind racing, I would sleep with a hand on her shoulder or around her waist to remind me that the book was not real, and that I was safe in my cozy yellow bedroom with my wife in our too-small bed.

I have always been superstitious about the talismanic power of books. As a kid I couldn't sleep with the cover of a Stephen King novel facing upwards on my nightstand. When I read American Psycho a couple years ago, the most unredeemably horrifying book I had ever encountered, I wouldn't keep it in my bedroom, and when I finally finished it, I dropped it into a trashcan on the street the next day. I didn't want it in my home.

With The Road, I placed it face-down on the dresser at the end of each night. One of the reasons I read so late into the morning hours was that if I encountered an idea or a passage that was especially bleak or gruesome, I couldn't stop there - I had to create more distance between myself and the offending paragraphs. In a way I was on my own journey to parallel that of the characters, searching for the same happy ending (to use a pat phrase) that they sought.

With that said, I can't recommend this book highly enough. I don't think it's for everyone (I think L would chuck it out the window), but it does fit in nicely with some of the other dystopian literature I've been encountering lately. I read this book after reading EB White's wry and wistful essays, and now I've moved on to more of Joan Didion's acerbic and incisive prose. But The Road has stayed with me; I've picked it up to read the first few pages again, to try to see how McCarthy did it. In the face of such disaster and horror, his ability to find love and bravery for two unknown people recalled the best of what his characters had lost, the best of what we all could lose.

I will also say this: this is the ballsiest book club choice Oprah has ever made. The ladies are about to get their socks knocked off.

Patriotism, part II

This semester I have been interning with a judge downtown, and today I got to see a naturalization ceremony where 250 people became American citizens. They were sitting in a massive room in the courthouse, people of all ages and from all over the place, many of them dressed in their best. The largest contingents were from the DR and China, but there were people from Armenia, Malawi, France, etc, and even, thanks apparently to the benefit of time travel, the USSR. A couple Iranians and Syrians, but no Iraqis (good luck, you guys! As you stand up, we'll stand down! So try to stand up without being blown to bits!). Anyways, I digress: today all of those people became Americans.

First, a clerk made everyone stand and repeat an oath of citizenship, which required people to serve the country, if necessary, to pick up arms in defense, and to pay taxes. This seemed much more stringent than what we require of native-born citizens, but that was fine. It was amusing to note that many of our newest citizens still have no grasp of the English language, though -- when asked to repeat after the clerk, a lot of people moved their mouths and looked around without making any sound. Or maybe they were just deaf new citizens, I don't know.

Then we all said the Pledge of Allegiance, which was refreshing. Then the judge (dare I say it, my judge) gave a speech where he talked about how America is the greatest country in the history of the world, and now everyone in the room is an equal, with the same rights and freedoms. We are all immigrants, from some other place, and no one has any standing over anyone else. Your citizenship, which is ten minutes' old, is good and solid and equivalent to that of a federal jduge, like him. With this freedom comes responsibilities: honoring our fellow citizens, respecting them, voting in elections, paying taxes. This is a happy day, one of the most important days of your life, and you should go celebrate with your loved ones after you leave here, because this is a wonderful occasion. You are a citizen of the United States of America. It was really a great, beautiful speech, which I utterly failed to recapture here. I wanted to copy it when we returned, but that would have been strange.

Afterwards, like graduation, they read everyone's name, and the people walked or strided or hobbled up and received their certificate and a handshake with the judge. Family members would occasionally clap. I sat there with a big smile on my face the whole time, watching people as they looked at their names and photos on the certificate, or made fleeting eye contact with the judge as they shook his hand and then left. The US Marshals were congratulating people too and clapping them on the back. A few people even made eye contact with me, and I would give the ol' smile-and-nod, American to American.

As we left I thought about how April 20, 2007 would be a memorable day for so many people. I thought of the risk and strength and courage it would take to leave your home, either willingly or under duress, and seek a new home and a new identity elsewhere. I am very fortunate to have never faced those trials, and now there are 250 more people in this great city with the same rights and freedoms as me, despite whatever differences of culture or language may exist between us. In that room was such a sense of unity and pride, only amplified by the complete heterogenity of the assembly. All of us are sheltered in the arms of this great country.

Patriotism

In the months after 9/11 Vanity Fair featured an Annie Leibovitz cover of George Bush and his team in the Oval Office: Dick Cheney, Condoleezza Rice, Don Rumsfeld, Colin Powell, George Tenet. I went out and bought the magazine and carefully cut out the cover and put it up on my wall. They looked strong, and intelligent, and capable. I felt reassured to see them, and I felt that America had some direction. Watching President Bush give his speech to Congress on September 20th gave me a certain courage and hope that was difficult to find during that time.

And yet now, of course, that sense of hope and unity is scattered to the wind. Every name I listed above is now weighed down by a litany of errors, mistakes, and examples of striking incompetence. What we are doing in Iraq is simply wasteful, of so much: the lives of our soldiers; the existing Iraqi society, which is now ripped to shreds; the good faith so many decent Iraqis placed in us; and the goodwill of the international community that buoyed us when we were at our lowest.

And yet - John McCain is out there advocating for more troops, more strength, and a longer commitment in Iraq. And the damned thing is, I think he's right: if we expect to pull any kind of success out of this debacle, we have to stick it through. But his problem, and the president's, is that our nation has lost the will for the fight, and for good reason. Once the president gets out of office, he will spend the rest of his life justifying and defending this war, and trying to come up with a narrative to vindicate his own errors. John McCain, I think, is acting honestly right now, with integrity. He's not pandering to anyone, because no one agrees with him; but he is insisting on this course, and staking his political future on it, because he thinks it's the right thing to do. And for that reason, I think what he is doing is an incredibly noble thing.

I'm a bit worked up now from reading Newsweek late at night. And at this hour of the morning I'm telling you I can see the threads binding this Imus debacle to our national fatigue with Iraq to the Duke lacrosse scandal to what happened at Virginia Tech today. Maybe all of those elements reveal a certain lack of honesty in our society, a coarseness, a cruelty, a rush to judgment, a lack of deliberation.

Oh Lord, we need a change right now. The national grief that we're about to endure - we've endured it before. The jockeying of the politicians, the race cards thrown down with such glee by all sides, the lies we've grown accustomed to, the parsed language that says nothing at all, the relentless sense of entropy...! I've had it.

I think this country is anticipating the next election because we are desperate for a change, desperate for a signal of different things to come. I voted for John McCain in the Virginia primary seven years ago, but I think his moment has passed. I am tired of the Bush/Clinton seesaw, where one half of the country violently hates our president for four or eight years, and then we switch. If Chuck Hagel can jump in the mix, and get the Republicans to pull their heads out of their butts about evolution, stem cells, gay marriage, and other issues, I might look to him. But to be honest, right now I feel the language and unity and hope and fresh air of Barack Obama is exactly the remedy this country needs.

So, in this dark night - as the last shreds of a nor'easter bluster outside the window, as the carnage burns in Iraq, as thirty-some families mourn the loss of their kids and spouses in Blacksburg, as the professional screamers and sycophants in our society sleep in preparation for another day of meaningless combat, as we all get another night older - I'm voting Obama for president. May the election come tomorrow.

E.B. White, "Here is New York," 1948:

"On any person who desires such queer prizes, New York will bestow the gift of loneliness and the gift of privacy. It is this largess that accounts for the presence within the city's walls of a considerable section of the population; for the residents of Manhattan are to a large extent strangers who have pulled up stakes somewhere and come to town, seeking sanctuary or fulfillment or some greater or lesser grail. The capacity to make such dubious gifts is a mysterious quality of New York. It can destroy an individual, or it can fulfill them, depending a good deal on luck. No one should come to New York to live unless he is willing to be lucky."

I love television, so what

This weekend L and I returned home, for the first time since January, to celebrate Easter. By "celebrate Easter," of course, I mean "lie in bed until eleven, enduring a sinus cold that had my head vibrating like a tuning fork and made me feel like my nose was full of gravel." Fortunately I think I have beaten the head cold into submission, but this is yet another misadventure in my travels with L in 2007. A pessimistic person might point out that something ranging from irritating to terrifying has happened every time L and I have ventured from the City this year: in Hawaii, there was the health issue that basically made the earth stop spinning; in Florida, there was the unseasonable cold front, the coldest weekend in months that of course warmed up as soon as our plane to New York left the tarmac; and now, for Easter, my sinuses were going crazy the entire time, so that it was a struggle to eat food, given that it's difficult to chew when you're also focused on breathing through your mouth. Well, fortunately I am not a pessimistic person, so I don't look at things that way.

We came back home ready and willing to buckle down and work hard, and wrap up this semester and look forward to what promises to be a great summer. L's tulips and hyacinth had bloomed, the apartment was fresh and fragrant, and the sun was shining. And then, yesterday afternoon, as I was cruising among the Internets and absent-mindedly watching, um, Oprah, the TV inexplicably shut off by itself. You homeowners out there know where this is going: THE TV WOULDN'T COME BACK ON. Five hours later, after long phone calls with the people at Philips and Circuit City, I had to accept the fact that our television had died. And unlike Jesus or the proverbial cat, it will not be coming back. Thanks to our warranty, they will be replacing our TV, hopefully some time within the next ten business days. As far as I am concerned, ten business days is an eternity in TV time, but I think this is God's way of punishing me for being too sick to go to church on Easter.

Now it's like, why bother to go back to the apartment? What are L and I going to do, talk to each other? I have spent a lot of time thinking about how I can schedule my gym-going to watch TV while on the treadmill, or figure out which networks let you watch free episodes, or what we can buy on iTunes, in an absolute worst-case scenario. But ultimately I think this will be good, at least in terms of studying and reading for pleasure and taking advantage of springtime.

Last night L wrote a message on our dusty TV screen with her finger, a suitable epitaph that is now, literally, the only thing to watch:

I LOVE MY HUSBAND
& MY TV.

Things I wanted to write about...

...but the moment has passed:

1. The 10K I did on Sunday, where two guys almost got in a fight, mid-run, and the antagonist, who was a real jerk, was actually slower than the guy he was picking on, which was hilarious. Also the fact that my calves were sore for days afterward because I haven't run downhill in months, which is sad (yet in my defense, the treadmills at the gym don't have a downward setting).

2. Joan Didion's "Slouching Towards Bethlehem," where I basically underlined the entire book and have spent weeks mulling over the last line of her preface: "writers are always selling somebody out."

3. R. Kelly's song "I'm a Flirt," which is like the perfect complement to Diddy's "Last Night," and I love both of them. I think if I had to identify the top songs of 2007 so far, they would be Omarion's "Ice Box" and "Last Night."

4. The fact that I have hit some sort of extracurricular wall at law school, and I am just sick and tired of planning events and running things and ordering food and being excited about everything. I spent huge chunks of time in high school, college, grad school, and work doing all of that, and dammit, I'm 27 years old and I've had enough.

5. We had a really nice spring evening last Tuesday: I darted home to run outside after school, and then we went to two different tapas places in the neighborhood, sitting outside and enjoying sangria. And a waitress complimented my Spanish accent. I wore shorts the whole day and it felt as if the entire city had let out a sigh of relief - there was a palpable sense of happiness and activity and community as we watched the city stroll by.

6. The other day at law school I got totally busted dancing in the hallway, listening to my ipod. As the person passed by, looking at me weirdly, I had to pretend my dance face was my standard countenance and sort of jerkily transition into a normal walking motion. It was not seamless, I'll tell you that.

7. Speaking of which, at hip hop last week, we were rocking out and then, in the middle of everything, at that moment where the music (a hot remix of "Ice Box," see above) fuses with the motion to create this perfect expression of humanity and joy, the teacher bellowed, "WORK, Mike!' in this way that was like a compliment and a command and a life lesson and a request all at the same time. I have been reliving this moment frequently.

Barcelona eye

There were two aftershocks to the Barcelona trip, the second of which still has me reeling (the first being the exploded bottle of cava in my suitcase). This second aftershock is the medical condition known in my apartment as Barcelona Eye.

Remember when L went to Honduras for a summer, and came back with Honduran Eye? That angry thing in her eye, looking like Hurricane Katrina on Doppler radar? Our biggest fears were either that her eyeball would melt or that something would come crawling out of it. This is our tradition of eye situations.

Thankfully that whole situation was resolved, but ever since I came back from Barcelona, my left eyelid has been occasionally twitching like mad. I try to talk to my friends or L or my supervisors at work, and I realize my eye has been fluttering coquettishly the entire time. I fear that this will somehow impair my depth perception, which has always been a real strong suit of mine (as my background in athletics will attest). I think maybe I need to replace my contact lens, or else sleep a little more, because it's getting ridiculous. I'm trying to make my way through the world and it's like I've got a strobe light attached to half my forehead. If the eye twitched when it was about to rain, or when there was impending danger, that would be one thing, but it seems pretty useless so far.

Barcelona! You feed me, thrill me, drench my clothes in champagne and give me facial tics! If that's not bittersweet, I don't know what is. Have a great weekend.

New Jersey wedding

I want to write something tonight, but I don't know what. We went to a wedding on Friday night in New Jersey. It was L's friend from her old job, and we only knew one other person besides the bride and groom. Consequently we were seated at the bride's riff raff table. The cocktail reception was so opulent that they had a caviar station with a series of flavored vodkas. I didn't even know how to approach this. When I tried the caviar I could feel each egg burst in my mouth in a little briny explosion. I looked at the vodkas longingly but didn't know how to drink them.

When we started dancing the photographer was all over L and I. I would dip her or spin her or dance behind her and the flashbulbs of the photographer would catch all of our motions like a strobe light. While I feel there is some potential for a completely awesome photo of the two of us, I think the bride and groom will look at that photoset and wonder who the hell we were. I was flattered that we were dancing well enough, or awkwardly enough, or memorably enough, to merit a lot of the photographer's time. God knows the real party was at the caviar table.

Since we didn't know anyone and had booked a hotel room for the night, we drank copious amounts. I made friends with the bartender who kept refilling L's champagne, and I joked with her about the music selections and how often I was coming back to the bar. I drank glass after glass of white wine. The bartender would ask if I wanted chardonnay or pinot grigio, and I would tell her to surprise me, or that at this point it didn't even matter. Our tablemates were friendly, although the nice guy who introduced himself to us turned out to be engaged to the brittle girl who was at first unfriendly and later unpleasant. Good luck with that one.

We danced to everything: to Beyonce and Frank Sinatra and everything in between. When there were eight people dancing to "YMCA," L and I and our other friend were three of them. Even though they didn't play the Electric Slide, we did it anyway. Twice. When they played "Sexyback," at times I was Justin and at other times I was Timbaland. I worried that my subtle shoulder dips, nimble footwork, and carefully calibrated dance face were lost on the other guests. After dinner and dancing, this opulent wedding presented an open bar of dessert wines and liquers. L gagged down a few sips of port, and I tossed back Sambuca, complete with coffee beans. Except for the next morning, when my head thought it was still at the wedding and my body thought it was at the bottom of a cement mixer, I had a great time. I felt suave, confident, and good-looking. It was the most fun I've had in a suit since law school took the concept of professionalism and beat me over the head with it.

So, it was a more enjoyable wedding than I ever could have expected. And it just goes to prove the validity of my number one matrimonial rule: if you don't have fun at a wedding, honestly it's your own fault. Because all of the elements are there.

Last night I had a Stephen Sondheim moment

Because she said so, Tuesday is officially "Date Night" for L and me. This is fine, because as far as I am concerned Tuesdays have become a wasteland in the middle of the week. There's nothing good on tv, and there's nothing fun at the gym so I can go bounce around for a couple hours. Instead it's just a long evening of thinking about what I want to eat for dinner, and then settling for sub-par Bravo reality shows. Often I'll end up at the gym on the treadmill watching American Idol, which I guess is not as bad as it could be. But Tuesday night is definitely not worth writing home about, usually.

Cut to last night! For my birthday L got us tickets to see "Company" on Broadway. This is a Stephen Sondheim musical, originally from 1970, about a single man swirling among his married friends' good and bad and ambiguous relationships. It was very funny, and the sensibility of the whole thing was very modern and kind of chic. There wasn't really a traditional narrative; it was more like a suite of songs exploring married life and why you would or would not want to get involved. I thought they brought out some interesting observations about emotions from within the marital bond: gratitude, devotion, and affection; curiosity, nostalgia, and even regret. They depicted several marriages that were thankfully very different from my own.

Maybe the lack of a structured narrative freed me to really enjoy the show. Usually I resent musicals, where the repetition of a single line of a song can really retard the forward progress of the story, and thus delay the moment when I get to go to the bathroom and buy M&Ms. On the other hand, I found these songs completely absorbing and smart. Unexpected notes, sophisticated melodies, and brilliant patter in the lyrcis - plenty of internal rhymes, bawdy humor, and some heartfelt sincerity.

I couldn't believe how I was so into this show: was it the perfect storm of musical theatre for me? Take an otherwise lackluster Tuesday, look sharp, go see a musical about an institution you've been thinking about on a near-constant basis for lo these many months, hear some clever songs, laugh occasionally and nod knowingly at the vagaries of this crazy thing we call matrimony. Maybe that is how I got to the point where I was contemplating buying the cd of the cast recording. "Do I really want this?" I asked my wife. "Well, it's all in your range, so you know you'll sing it," she said, thus affirming why I wanted to marry her in the first place.

That's how I got here at this moment, sitting in the library before tackling my income tax assignment, listening to Stephen Sondheim on my ipod and wondering if I used "vagaries" properly. On this Wednesday afternoon I am looking back on yesterday as one of the best Tuesdays I've had in a long while.

Barcelona notebook

As attentive readers will note, I managed to survive my trip to Barcelona, and not die, as I predicted last week. The trip was wonderful. I appreciated the chance to explore a new urban area, and I enjoyed getting an introduction to the way James lives. He has a pretty fantastic situation over there - if anyone is going to Spain, definitely look James up and stay with him. (Totally worth your time! Don't mention my name!) Anyways, a few observations:

...Since when did air travel become a giant sleepover? I have never seen more people (namely women) in sweat pants and pajama bottoms and horrible track suits. I know people dress comfortably in order to avoid the chance of a full-cavity search by our helpful and competent TSA employees, but most of the passengers lounging around the gate area, reading US Weekly and eating Toblerones, looked downright dumpy. It's like our response to the threat created by Al Qaeda is to really heighten those American attributes that the terrorists can't seem to get enough of. We all think: if this plane is hijacked, these a-holes are going to have to take down 250 Americans who are fatter and more slovenly than ever. And I guess there's no small amount of satisfaction in that...

...Do Catalunyan parents hate their Catalunyan teenagers as much as I did? Because there's no reason they shouldn't. The teenagers over there run around the city like packs of wild dogs, hooting and hollering in Catalunyan, which is not a language but a series of clicks, grunts, and throat-clearings. In the Parc Guell James and I watched a horde of teenagers kick a soccer ball into a crowded cafe area as they tried to nail each other with ball. People were scattering about and trying to avoid the assault, and the kids just played on obliviously. Nobody said anything, no kid thought, hey, let's tone it down. As we would walk through the city, I would get extremely nervous when a pack of them would walk by. I was aware of my status as a bizarrely-dressed foreigner and completely expected to get shaken down or threatened with a switchblade by these surly, mulleted youths. But James played it cool (his education expertise coming in handy) and we never had trouble. Still, the entire country needs to go on "Supernanny," and that woman needs to come over and straighten things out. On one of my last days I was reading a book and bunch of teens came over near my bench to shoot craps or whatever they do, and I just got up and left. Nothing good would be found there...

...I have no skill in identifying Americans among the European throngs. I thought it would be easy to tell who else was from America: they would be dressed like normal people, and they would be sort of fat. Yet every time I saw a woman in a standard sweater set, or a guy in jeans and a polo, or a teenager without a mullet, I would realize that they were all speaking German and smoking cigarettes. I had no skill in identifying Americans at all. I think the Europeans have finally learned to dress like we do, without the bizarre brand names or English phrases across their clothes, and their dietary habits are finally catching up. Fortunately, it seems like many Asian tourists to Spain are really picking up the slack, in terms of dressing weirdly. And that's not racist, it's an empirical observation...

...Three times, I found myself confronted by an errant soccer ball from some kids playing a game nearby. So I had to kick it back to them. Readers of this blog will know that this situation presents about 35 of my deepest fears in one neat package. Due to a traumatic experience with a soccer coach in first grade, it has never been my forte (as a matter of fact, baseball is) (right). So when the ball would come my way, and the kid nearby would yell, "Pasa! Pasa!," time seemed to slow to a crawl as I ... trapped the ball beneath my foot, and slowly, carefully, already hearing the taunts of the schoolchildren in the guttural, undisciplined Catalunyan tongues...kicked the ball back to them with the inside part of my foot, like my favorite soccer player, Brandy Chastain. And then the kids would forget about me and I would keep walking, ready to rip my shirt off and expose my sports bra for all the city to see...

...And, that's what I have to say about Barcelona, for the time being. The flight back was an utter nightmare, and the fact that I still haven't received my luggage a day later is some verification of that. (In the terminal, I tried to relax by composing a haiku about the pretty Indian flight attendants, with their bone structure and eye shadow, and british accents, but it was too much for 17 syllables.) Barcelona remains an amazing city, and the fact that James will be there for a while offers great promise of future visits. It's nice to get some distance to reflect on your own life while you experience an entirely different version. So I am home now, using L's toothbrush and lamenting the temporary loss of half my polo shirts, while at the same time saying "perdon" to people at the Strand and adding a slice of lemon in my Coke. This is why we travel.

Travel anxiety

One of my stupider characteristics is my tendency to freak out before embarking on any kind of trip. Whether I am going home for the weekend on the bus or flying to another continent, I am always gripped by the same set of stupid neurotic questions:

Why are you going again?
Isn't your life at home good enough?
What if something bad happens to you?
What if something bad happens to someone else?
You must think you're something, tempting fate like this, huh?
Just can't leave well enough alone, can you?
Did you remember your wallet?
The pickpockets target Americans, you know that, right?
So you didn't get any Travelers Checks?
Is it too late to just stay home?
Did you bring enough socks?

Et cetera. These questions basically rotate through my brain, CNN-crawl-style, for several days leading up to the trip. Really I don't feel good until I've successfully beat back the airport bureaucracy long enough to claim a seat on the plane. At that point it's unlikely someone will make you take your belt off or squeeze your toothpaste into a baggie or whatever the hell they do at airports these days. Of course, once you're on the plane, you have to make sure you survive the takeoffs and landings, since that's when the crashes occur.

All I know is, I better not die on this trip. But if I do die, I want L to know that I love her dearly and want her to be happy, so if she wants to get remarried someday that's fine, and she has my blessing, provided that she understand that I will HAUNT THE SHIT out of her husband for the rest of his life. Because I do love her so.

Well, as you can tell, my flight to Barcelona is only eighteen hours away. Somebody get me some horse tranquilizer and shove me onto the AirTrain - this could be a bumpy night.

It's hard to take a good picture of a coffee table

Two Sundays ago we went over to Nicky's apartment, where he kindly donated a coffee table to us. We didn't know how badly we needed a table until we had one, and then we nearly began weeping with delight every time we were able to put a plate or a newspaper on top of it. "It's not on the floor," we would choke out, as the tears kept coming. And since so far the table hasn't been revealed as a Trojan horse full of bedbugs or termites or al Qaeda operatives, it's just good news all around. Some people think it brings the room together; other people just like not eating food from your lap, like we're at some kind of perpetual family barbecue.


Anyway, here are a couple photos of the newest addition to our meager little city-mouse home. It's hard to take a good picture of a coffee table, especially when it is in constant use, like ours. But a few features to note: the lower shelf, perfect for laptops and magazines; the beveled glass top, perfect for making your heart skip when you think something is about to spill due to the unexpected angle, only it doesn't because the bevelling is just shallow enough to catch it; and the fine layer of dust that clings to the entire surface area of the table like the fur on a tarantula. (Not good at similes.) We wondered where all this dust had been hiding before we got the table to act as a magnet to catch it. Was the rug absorbing it? Or what?

But I'm not a whiner! Even if our place is now hay fever central, it's great to have a table. Thank you Nicky.

***

And with that, I am going to Barcelona in two days to see James. More news to come.

Things I've recently dropped in the toilet

A bandaid
An entire book of matches
Numerous q-tips
My laptop
My birth certificate
Textbooks
My running shoes
"Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest"
A Faberge egg
My wife
A second toilet
A gingerbread house

...anything else?

Instinto de Inez

Recently John and Anna gave me a Mexican edition of Carlos Fuentes' novel, "Instinto de Inez," in Spanish. Being in the middle of a slight book drought (waiting endlessly for a package from Amazon, which I guess is delivering my book via carrier pigeon) I picked it up and just thought I'd see how I'd do, reading Spanish. My Spanish skills are extremely rusty, subsisting on the occasional Shakira song or New York-area immigrant-focused publication. I try to think about Spanish a lot, and mentally conjugate things for fun, and consider when I would use the subjunctive, but you and I both know that this is no way to maintain language skills.

So I started to read this book, and lo and behold I'm now 50 pages in, and I have a rough grasp of what actually might be going on! See, there's this guy, right, and this girl, and somehow they meet, and it might have been because of the London Blitz or maybe it was just a rainstorm, but the point is they got in a car together, and now they're like at the guy's house, and he has a friend in a photograph...it's really good. Seriously, though, I am enjoying this experience much more than I expected. I told myself not to worry about not understanding words I didn't know (immediately eliminating most adjectives then and there) so I do feel like I am merely skimming across the surface of the language. But there is something beautiful about pausing to consider a sentence, figuring out its structure, thinking of the object and the subject and the verbs and all that. Or even considering weird conjugation issues, and trying to directly translate a sentence into English. Soon I just find myself pleasantly gliding through the text, not even thinking or translating in English but just accepting a Spanish understanding of what's going on, and somehow getting it. The romance and beauty of that language strikes me time and time again, so I'll be sitting on the subway whispering words to myself: susurro, parpado...

I would love to learn more languages, I think, or deepen my knowledge of Spanish. Every time I see a possibly latino person on the train I perk up my book to better show off the extremely-Spanish title and copy, just to celebrate the common lingual bond I might share with that other possible Spanish-speaker. Just another way of making our mundo a little more pequeno, you know what I'm saying?

27 is the new 26

My weekend was intense and wonderful: an epic night at Benny's, a four-mile race to kick off the 2007 running year, a trip to the airport to see James, a birthday party, church, a classic Manhattan afternoon, a great gym class, and Oscar-night food coma. I want to write about all of this stuff, but it's too overwhelming, so I'm going to go all Orientalist on you and break it down haiku-style:

---

Juan's a good waiter:
'Ritas, black flowers, and shots
The men's room is home

---

Seven degrees, wind
7:28 per mile
He outruns the cold.

---

Wait at Arrivals...
Walk away happy and sad
Five months in one hour

---

Eight-count to the beat
It's my song! It's my birthday!!
Don't spill on my rug.

---

Twenty-seventh year:
Good wife, good life, good city,
church points out to me.

---

Usually in the back,
At the gym I play it cool--
now your boy's up front.

---

Friends, Oscars, excess
Life resumes so pleasantly
And they even sang.

Sliced and diced

Warning: this post is kind of gross, and not for the faint of heart.

This afternoon I went to go visit Enzo, John and Anna's cat, who we are feeding and chatting with while they're away in Mexico. Enzo is really one of the best cats I've ever known, because he's very dog-like: friendly, outgoing, affectionate.

Well, today I was standing at the counter, curling open a tin of wet cat food, Enzo mewling at my feet, when the edge of the can lid cut into the skin at the last joint of my pinkie finger. Suddenly there was blood running down my hand and onto the counter and into the sink. I was shocked at first - pressing the cut with a paper towel and simultaneously trying to clean up the mess. I dumped the food into Enzo's bowl to distract him and focused on the cut - I ran it under the cold faucet and watched the diluted blook wash away. The cut was like the open mouth of a smiley face. It hurt like hell. Every paper towel I pressed into it became a sodden bloody mess within a few minutes. Enzo was everywhere: between my legs, on the counter, rubbing against my arm. I thought, the last thing I need in the wound is cat hair. I thought, bury these towels deep in the trash so they don't freak out when they see them. I thought, don't let Enzo touch the blood or he'll turn into a vampire cat.

It wouldn't stop bleeding. After about 20 minutes I called L, and she called the student health people. I already had visions of my immaculate Thursday night being shot to hell - no great gym class, no good tv, just me in an ER waiting for stitches. I found band-aids in the bathroom, but I bled through two of them. After talking to L and deciding not to get stitches, I stumbled out of the apartment, doing everything with my left hand, promising Enzo, like a little feline deadbeat dad, that I would come back for more quality time tomorrow.

On the street I clutched my hands together and tried to hide the bloody paper towel from other people. In the pharmacy I jerked open the lid of the band-aid box and tried to apply it myself, with mixed results. As I returned to the street, though, I was shocked to see that the bleeding had abated. Instead of a gaping smiley mouth the wound was more like a ... parenthesis. A bold one, in a thick, unsubtle font, but only a parenthesis.

I went to the gym with high hopes. I made it on the treadmill and the pull-up thing, but then in class, we were ten minutes in when I saw that there was blood all over my hand. There was blood on the hardwood floor, too. Disgusted, I grabbed my towel and scrubbed at it, Lady MacBeth-style, and retreated to the lockerroom. With a fresh band-aid I returned, but it was only a few more minutes until I noticed blood again on my hand, and even traces on my shirt, and on the floor. I felt like that scene in "Carrie," when she gets her period in the locker room and the girls taunt her, except in my case, I expected the other hip hoppers to throw cans of cat food at me. I scrambled out, grabbed my stuff and returned to the lockerroom utterly cowed. I took a shower and left. I thought about staying to apologize to my teacher but I realized I was too angry to talk. I look forward to Thursday nights like no other; I was so disappointed.

Now I'm home, on band-aid number 4, fully expecting another tsunami of blood at any given moment. It really hurts. I figure, it must be better in the morning, right? I don't want stitches, I'm not going to the damn hospital. I tell you, these things always happen on the brink of something good (say, a chock-full birthday weekend: fun drinks tomorrow with Ashesh and Mona, a James cameo and rollicking party on Saturday, a lovely Sunday to follow). It even occurred to me that the blood stains on my hand are maybe reparations for the ashes that didn't stain my forehead yesterday.

Anyways, hopefully this will look better tomorrow morning. I hope the bleeding calms down, after a night of rest and no movement. Tomorrow I'm looking forward to returning to the scene of the crime and making amends with Enzo, getting some of the quality time that was cut short today, assuming of course that he hasn't developed a taste for human blood.

State update: Florida

Well, our second attempt to enjoy some exotic warm weather was thwarted. Not by sudden hospitalization, thankfully, but because of the unseasonable chill that settled over southwestern Florida as soon as we landed, and that did not relent until we had come back to the barren icy hellhole of Manhattan. But we were able to have some good times in Naples, where L and I and my sister had a great long weekend with my grandparents.

Although we spent a lot of time relaxing on the plush interior of one of many gated communities, my grandparents' taste for local flair gave us a lot of exposure to native Floridian culture. We drove an hour down to Goodland to eat stone crabs and sit on a restaurant deck amidst the Thousand Islands. It happened to be the day of the Mardi Gras boat parade, so gaudily festooned boats and yachts would troll past (sample themes: pink flamingoes, a drug bust, redneck yacht club) as the crowd at the restaurant - mostly old, many grizzled - downed their beer and twirled their colorful beads.

There's something strange about Florida - I can't put my finger on it, but I think it has something to do with cohabitating with alligators. Gators are such a big thing down there, a totem of something, and I think people's reaction to living among these fierce and timeless predators is to go a little bit weird. Floridians, for example, were much ruder and pushier than New Yorkers (or even Hawaiians - it's like the Aloha spirit landed here and rotted in a corner). They love their guns and Confederate flags. They're sort of trashy (can I say that?). It was interesting. Question: when we were in Florida, how many times did we hear the phrase "jew canoe"? Answer: more than never!

But, we had a great time. On the same day as the boat parade, Goodland also featured an outdoor concert by the Mullet Brothers, just outside of the Island Woman store, where we all tried on weird hats with fake wigs attached as a few locals drunkenly danced outside. I gaily tossed my fear of head lice aside so we could take many photos like this:

It was wonderful to spend some quality time with my grandparents, to read a couple great books, and to eat like a king: the signature key lime pie, fresh seafood at every turn, crisp apples, canteloupes, blueberries, and the most delicious strawberries I can remember. Although it was kind of a drag with the cold weather, I tried to buck myself up by reminding myself that at least it was thirty degrees warmer than back home. Anyways, so Florida: temperate, amusingly weird, fattening; not as warm as it could have been; good eating. That's the update on that.

Marathon man

I received an email notification from the New York Road Runners telling me I qualified for automatic entry into the New York City marathon. Twenty minutes and about $130 later, I am all signed up and ready to run on November 4th -- 26.2 miles. 26.2 miles, an extremely long distance. As I went through the registration process I realized I was just beginning to endure a ten-month barrage of opportunities to spend money to heighten the race experience, brought to me by the considerate sponsors of the event eager to scream about every possible thing you can purchase: moisture-wicking shirts! Shorts made of nylon, rayon, and mesh! Special charity shoelaces! Bags no one needs! Pasta dinners!

I have begun looking around at training programs, too. There's one I can join through NYRR that costs only $7 a month! But that seems too expensive. There's also one by a person named "Hal Higdon" that is very well-reviewed among my friends, but Hal's website is straight up Geocities circa 1998. I should go look in the bookstore, too, as well as the 400 specialty running shops that spring up in Manhattan every time a Tastee-D-Lite whimpers to a close. My mom says I should get a physical immediately to determine if I'm healthy enough to even attempt this. Always the optimist, my mom. I was also realizing that I will actually have to change my lifestyle to get ready for this thing, especially in the final weeks: I have to run and exercise in precise, calibrated ways; I have to eat very deliberately, with a weird balance of protein and fiber and whatever else; and I have to develop that bizarre marathon physique where your cheeks sink in and you start to run oddly, because your entire midsection has dissolved into three tendons holding up your new rayon running shorts.

But the good thing is that all of this is still extremely hypothetical -- since I'm already running and in reasonably good shape I don't really need to begin training in earnest for a few months, maybe late spring. But we can look forward to plenty of blisters, shin splints, and dry heaves in the weeks and months to come.

But damn if I'm not going to rock this marathon on November 4th. It's good to know the goal.

EMNY

I have a great idea for a new quality-of-life, public relations campaign for the city. It's called "Excuse Me New York." Maybe it's the inhumanly frigid temperatures we've been enduring, or fatigue with the war, or maybe New Yorkers are just genuine bastards, but I have decided that something needs to be done on a city-wide scale. Because these people are jerks.

The idea behind "Excuse Me New York" is to get people to say "excuse me" to their fellow citizens. The brilliance of this campaign, and the reason I'm convinced that it's destined for success, is that it encourages people to excuse themselves in one of two ways, which almost everyone will be willing to do: 1) the genuine, polite, decent way, the way that adults excuse themselves to avoid social embarassment and promote a civil society, or 2) the snarling, more acidic way, barking the phrase to gently remind the other person that he or she is an asshole. New Yorkers would be completely willing to support this campaign. Many of them already do.

Here are some examples of how this campaign would work, taken from my own life: To the girl in the library snacking on snap peas or something, chewing so loudly and violently that I couldn't concentrate on my reading: Excuse me. To the man at Chipotle in the unnecessary cowboy hat, reaching over the glass sneezeguard to point at (and into) the burrito ingredients he wanted: Excuse me. To the woman who barged into me at the gym, and, moments later, tossed her nasty sweat-towel towards me in a misguided attempt to put it in the bin: Excuse me, and get some glasses.

So you see what I'm saying. "EMNY" is going to be big in 2007, and it will really fill a void here in the city. If you want a t-shirt or a bumper sticker or something, let me know. Don't forget: Excuse Me New York.

Japanese culture: I just love it!

Right now I'm reading "The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle" by Haruki Murakami. This is the second novel of his that I've tackled, and his books are consistently surprising - they're infused with a sharp strain of magical realism, but with a weird Japanese bent. Maybe it's a response to all those towering cubicle high-rises and the packed commuter trains, or whatever twisted impulse creates those guys who never leave their parents' home for forty years, or that vein of Japanese horror movies with empty houses, mewling children and ghosts in your handheld wireless device.

Whatever it is, Murakami packs it in. He writes in such a leisurely pace, and his narrative style is so unobtrusive, yet all of the elements come together. What is fantastic seems plausible and what is unbelievable seems probable. I am definitely enjoying this book, but it's also got me thinking a lot about translation. As alien as a culture may be, the act of translation makes it accessible and familiar to the reader. I read this novel, and I think: Japanese people like humor, they use contractions, they love their wives, they like to go swimming in the summer.

I am definitely learning more about Japanese culture from this novel that I did from our time in Hawaii, when we carefully noted what the Japanese people would eat during different meals. In Hawaii's massive and wonderful ABC Stores (like 7-11 but with more Aloha spirit, in the sense of cashiers who aren't quite clear on coin denominations), they sold triangular mounds of seaweed stuffed with something weird, and the Japanese people could not get enough. These things were flying off the shelves. One morning, in a spirit of international understanding, L grabbed one at our complementary hotel breakfast. When she opened the package, it smelled so bad that she carefully placed it on the balcony and left it there for the rest of the day. She didn't want to leave it in the room, for fear of what it would do to our clothing and the bedding. I don't know what was in there - bleach? an ant farm? I just worried about the birds who might try to eat part of it, fly a few more yards, then die mid-flight and plummet down into the swimming pool. Or worse yet, a tiki torch.

The point being: Murakami is great, I'm loving this book, you might want to read it, and it's giving me a great appreciation of Japanese culture, which I am loving more than ever.

State of the apartment address

My fellow residents:

We gather each year to look around us and assess the conditions of this glorious apartment of ours. As we summon the courage and wisdom to survey our several hundred square feet and all that it contains, let us remember the spirit of adventure and enterprise that has propelled us forward unto this task.

My fellow residents, the state of the apartment is strong. Strong, yes, yet not as tidy as it could be.

I continue to drape clothes over the blue chair, sometimes for days at a time. This just makes sense to me - you can't put clothes straight in the laundry bag, you should let them sit out for a while. Most people understand this. Other people in the apartment are not as adamant as some other people might be about putting used mugs and glasses in the sink, or better yet, the dishwasher. Let us not leave this problem for future generations to solve.

Bedmaking is a tedious task, but a necessary one. As is cleaning the bathroom. As much as even I would like to believe it, two paper towels and a liberal squirt of glass cleaner are not enough to clean the bathroom. Perhaps for the toilet, though.

I would like to pause for a moment in memory of the tragic loss we suffered this year. While we were away in Hawaii, several of our beloved plants, namely the spidery vine thing on top of the book case, perished under conditions of drought. We honor the memory of this beloved plant, and vow, with love and compassion, to forge ahead with new plants. The resilience of the other spider plant, and especially Buddy the bamboo plant, are an inspiration to us all.

Despite these setbacks, we approach a new year with bright eyes and open hearts. We gaze fondly on our teeming stacks of books, piles of detritus from law and public health schools, respectively, and the wad of plastic grocery bags stuffed under the sink. We occasionally consider the dust that gathers in awkward places, like the edges of picture frames and over the tops of my dress shoes, but we focus on the brighter days and dreams to come. We are an apartment of hope, optimism, and charity; an apartment dedicated to the ideals of literacy, equality, and gender-neutral hierarchies; an apartment that is rented with the distant yet immortal aspiration of condo ownership.

My fellow residents, the state of the apartment is strong. God bless, and please keep it down since the walls are paper-thin and we can already hear the neighbor snoring next door.

Doors closing

This morning I got yelled at by high school kids on the subway. The train was pretty crowded as we arrived at 59th St., and I was standing up and trying to move around the man positioned between me and the door. "Excuse me," I said evenly. "Excuse me. Excuse me." I didn't raise my voice or anything - this guy was just a bit oblivious. The window of opportunity to disembark the train was shrinking - soon people would be pressing themselves into the car. I made my way around the man, towards the doors, and encountered a wave of high school kids coming into the train.

I have developed a certain (extremely conditional) fondness for the urban Manhattan high school kid: decked out in the latest hip hop gear, blaring rap songs through tinny cellphone speakers, loud and rowdy but not especially crude or threatening. They're just like teenagers anywhere, but maybe more ethnic and style-conscious, as well as more exotically named.

As I pushed my way out, jostling against the surge of kids shoving themselves on the train, I heard them: "Awwww, MAN," "Geez," "Come ON," sucking their teeth at me derisively. They thought I was a moron for not getting off the train quickly enough. And, then, miraculously, in my own "Dangerous Minds" moment, I heard a girl say: "Hey, it's not his fault, he was trying to get out!" I looked at her plaintively and said, in an unintentionally Ross Geller-ish way, "THANK yoouu." I could hear them laugh as I escaped the subway car. I did a quick check to make sure I had my wallet, phone, keys, Ipod - and I was all set. It was a good start for the day.